Over the weekend, it became clear that the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan had become an unmitigated disaster as images of Afghan civilians clinging to a military plane in the hopes of escaping the Taliban emerged. As the disaster continues to unfold, there’s obviously been a considerable amount of criticism of Joe Biden and his administration. Some of it is entirely reasonable—they clearly should have figured out, among other things, a way to evacuate more people before the country completely collapsed—and some of it is typical hysteria from the right, which has conveniently forgotten that Donald Trump and the GOP have been cheerleading a full pullout from Afghanistan until very recently, and that it was actually the last president who negotiated a deal with the Taliban to pull out U.S. troops, which many believe cost the U.S. leverage it could have applied to force the Taliban “to adhere to the peace deal and a cessation of hostilities,” according to Insider. And some of these Republicans are so shameless in their denunciation of Biden that they’re calling for him to be removed from office via 25th Amendment, despite standing by Trump as he engaged in behavior worthy of invoking the 25th on a near-daily basis during his time in office.
One of those people is Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, who on Monday tweeted, “We must confront a serious question: Is Joe Biden capable of discharging the duties of his office or has time come to exercise the provisions of the 25th Amendment?” To be clear, at no time during Trump’s first term did Scott suggest that the 45th president was no longer fit to hold office, not when he was trying to extort Ukraine and not when he incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol. To also be clear, Scott is a partisan hack who was one of just eight GOP senators who tried to overturn a free and fair election even after MAGA rioters tried to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win, and he gave Trump a “Champion of Freedom Award” in April. Oh, and before he got into politics, he was CEO of a company that committed “historic medicare fraud,” in case you were wondering if you should trust literally anything he ever says. And he asked for Biden’s assistance in Florida on the same day he claimed the guy might not be “capable of discharging the duties of his office.”
Speaking of people whose calls for Biden to be removed from office should be taken with several thousand grains of salt, former White House physician Ronny Jackson would like people to know that he’s been calling for Biden to be taken out via the 25th since way before the Afghanistan situation, retweeting a TV appearance from July in which he claimed, “There’s something serious going on with this man right now and you know I think he’s either going to resign—they’re going to convince him to resign from office at some point in the near future for medical issues—or they’re going to have to use the 25th Amendment to get rid of this man right now. There’s some serious stuff going on right now and if they do that it’ll be the president’s cabinet that initiates that.”
Claiming Biden is somehow mentally incapacitated has been a go-to for the right since the campaign trail, when their claims that he was a socialist who would destroy the suburbs didn’t stick, which was and remains an odd argument given that Trump can barely string a sentence together without stumbling on his words, among other things. As for Ronny, he once claimed Trump could live to be 200 years old, so he might not be entirely unbiased.
And if you needed any more evidence these 25th calls are only coming from the most hysterical, shameless Republican hacks, Trump’s rent-a-lawyer also supports it too.
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